Plastic resins are used for many products, as plastic is moldable and can be tailored to have specific tensile and shear strengths, and other materials properties that can be changed based on the material composition, for various applications. As used herein, “resin” generally refers to a polymer or copolymer. Plastics are often produced from petroleum or other oil-based materials. However, such plastic products, such as water bottles and other packaging items, are often not biodegradable, and as such are not as reusable or effectively recyclable in terms of cost. Although petroleum-based plastics are recyclable, the cost to recycle these products is high. Further, petroleum-based plastics are increasingly ending up in landfills, oceans, and other places where ecological damage is becoming an increasing concern.
Because of the increased costs of petroleum products, and the ecological effects of non-biodegradable plastics, there have been recent attempts at manufacturing biodegradable plastics, which are often referred to as “bioplastics.” Many of these attempts have been accompanied with high cost, low recycling yield, and other barriers to entry for a bioplastic facility. As such, the ability of bioplastics to compete with petroleum-based plastics has not yet been fully achieved.
Of particular interest are plastic resins known as polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) resins. PHAs combine sufficient biodegradability characteristics with desirable material properties, which allow the use of PHAs in a larger number of applications over other biodegradable plastic materials. However, one of the barriers to market entry for PHAs has been the cost of production being tied to the cost of sugar, which is used as a raw material for producing PHAs. Because the cost of the raw material used to produce PHA is subject to many market forces, biodegradable PHAs are often sold at a premium price versus petroleum-based plastics having comparable material properties. This price differential has discouraged markets from employing PHAs on a large scale.